Plato: The Really Real
4.1 Plato’s Life and Times
- Appreciate Plato’s influence on Western thought and why he has been so highly regarded.
- Know the main events in Plato’s life and explain their significance for philosophy and the history of ideas.
- Understand the role that Socrates plays in Plato’s dialogues.
4.2 Knowledge and Reality
- Define relativism and skepticism and understand how Plato responded to these doctrines.
- Understand the three necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and why true belief alone does not qualify as knowledge.
- Understand Plato’s reasoning in arriving at his theory of knowledge.
- Define the Forms and explain how Plato thinks they are related to the material world.
- Know the story of Socrates and his questioning of the slave boy and be able to explain what conclusion Socrates draws from this experience.
- Define rationalism and empiricism and know which doctrine Plato accepted and why.
4.3 Allegory of the Cave
- Recount Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and explain what significance it has for him.
- Explain how the allegory may allude to Socrates.
4.4 Immortality, Morality, and the Soul
- Understand the early Greek concept of the soul and how it changed over time.
- Explain Plato’s two arguments for immortality—the arguments from recollection and affinity.
- Explain Plato’s concept of the tripartite soul and why he thinks the soul must have more than one aspect.
- Explain why Plato thinks it’s more beneficial to be just than unjust.
- Recount the story of the ring of Gyges and explain what Glaucon thought it proved.
4.5 The Individual and the State
- Define democracy, meritocracy, and aristocracy.
- Explain the make-up of Plato’s ideal society and what he views as the central tenet of personal and community morality.